FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions)
- What movies are you currently watching?
- What books are you currently reading?
- Is Omega the last time we'll see Hutch?
No. In a new novel, funding for the Academy is drying up. Turns out there's no money to be made from interstellar flight (aside from running tours). Resources are needed elsewhere, particularly in the battle against greenhouse problems. It's beginning to look like another space shutdown, at a time when it seems somebody out there is throwing rocks. Hutch will be involved trying to save the interstellar effort, in Odyssey. Publication date: November 2006.
Hutch will be back in 2007. When the newly-developed Locarno drive makes long-range missions possible, Hutch will lead a flight to the galactic core in search of the source of the omega clouds.
- Will there be a sequel to Ancient Shores or Eternity Road?
None is planned at the moment. But Ancient Shores, particularly, leaves room for a follow-up. I started out intending everything to be a stand-alone. Hence no sequels. Eventually I figured out that books could be linked, but each novel could still work as a solitary narrative. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a sequel to either or both.
- Did you plan the sequence of events in the four Academy novels from the beginning?
I didn't have a clue what lay beyond the appearance of the omega clouds. When other story ideas showed up that needed a star-faring civilization, it seemed natural to place them in Hutch's universe. But I couldn't go back to the clouds themselves until I had a hypothesis — at least a reasonable theory — to offer. That involved avoiding the obvious: that the clouds were either an ancient runaway weapon, or an ancient runaway urban reclamation project. Walt Cuirle, a physicist who writes occasionally for Analog, suggested the eventual explanation — offered by Hutch in Omega — as a theory. In Cauldron (the final Academy novel Ace 2007), new technology has made longer range operatiions possible. And a mission to the galactic core will try to settle the matter.
- Any chance of a movie anywhere?
None that I know of.
- Eternity Road, Infinity Beach, and Polaris are all mysteries. It looks as if Seeker will be another one. Why are you so interested in combining mysteries and SF?
I've always loved a good mystery. I was a fan of Jack, Doc, and Reggie when I was eight years old. Discovered Holmes early. Got hooked on Father Brown, Hercule Poirot, and etc. SF provides an opportunity to work with a different kind of mystery. We are not trying to solve a murder, not trying to decide which of several suspects is the killer. It can move instead on a grander scale. What happened here? Why does a man who spends a lifetime working with SETI intercept a signal and then cover it up? Get a reasonable answer for that one — not My God they're so horrible the world is not yet ready to know — and the story will write itself. And people will have a hard time putting it down.
- Aside from SF, what do you like to read?
Everything. I'm making my way through Paul Johnson's excellent
History of the American People. Also: The Quotable Lewis (a C.S. Lewis collection), edited by Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root. I'm also reading The Young Mencken, a collection by Carl Bode.
And I just finished Steven Berry's The Third Secret. This is
Berry's third novel, and it kept me guessing.
- There are lots of chess references in your work. Do you play? How good are you?
Not much anymore. My rating topped out at about 1700, a middling class B player. But I've always had a passion for the game. In fiction, it helps suggest that the characters are reasonably bright. And, played by a fireplace, it adds a coziness to these high-tech environments. It also allows me to predict that chess will survive all the e-games.
- Alex Benedict was the narrator of A Talent for War. Chase is the narrator of Polaris. (And of Seeker.) Why the change?
There was an almost-complete draft of Polaris, narrated by Alex. In the process, I discovered why Holmes needs Watson. Alex knew too much, or had guessed too much. I wanted the reader doing his own deductive work. So Alex would have had to withhold his ideas from the reader. That never works well. That meant I needed a narrator who did not quite know what was going on. I put the draft aside, and rewrote it, using Chase.
- Your protagonists are usually women. Chaka Milana in Eternity Road, Kimberly Brandywine in Infinity Beach, Hutch in the Academy novels, and now Chase Kolpath. Where are the guys?
I grew up watching Dale Arden faint every time Flash Gordon got into trouble. Maybe Hutch, Chase, and the others are my reaction. Years ago, when I was teaching management seminars for the Customs Service, we used to put groups of people together to form teams. We put the teams in crisis situations, a plane crash in the desert, e.g., and then presented them with problems. The key to survival was their ability to communicate. To talk with each other and arrive at the most sensible course of action.
We discovered that gender makeup of the group often influenced chances of survival. All-female groups came out alive far more often than any other type. All-male groups made it about half the time. Mixed groups? You didn't want to be there. What seemed to happen was that everyone fell into gender-specific roles. Men became more aggressive, women more passive.
Having females show the way, step in during the crunch, and perform the rescues, is of course by no means new with Hutch and her sisters. But it is an approach that is flat out a pleasure to write. And judging from the proposals of marriage that roll in for these fictional characters, it works for the readers too.
- Gregory MacAllister, the editor from Deepsix who disapproves of everybody, was an unusual character. How did you come up with him?
I can't take credit. MacAllister is loosely based on H. L. Mencken. He's another character who's a sheer joy to write. He will be back as the viewpoint character in Odyssey, when he finds himself in opposition to Hutchins.
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